Objects in a Terrifying Tense / Longing from Taking Place

Leslie Scalapino's meticulous commitment to understanding certain writings has resulted in this wonderful book Objects in a Terrifying Tense / Longing from Taking Place. It proposes that such an understanding does not fix ideas or limit the attention. Rather "to understand" gives one access to perpetually gliding present– an enormous guided moment of mobile thought. This moment– or what she calls "reality"– is the realm of understanding, and it is also the only grounds for it. Objects in the Terrifying Tense / Longing from Taking Place,/i> is a moment of reading, spectacular, in place and with momentum. — Lyn Hejinian

Leslie Scalapino (July 25, 1944 – May 28, 2010) was the author of thirty books of poetry, prose, inter-genre-fiction, plays, and essays, including a collaboration with artist Kiki Smith, a collaboration with the artist Marina Adams, and a collaboration with the poet Lyn Hejinian. Her long poem way: a poem won the Poetry Center Award, the Lawrence Lipton Prize, and the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Scalapino taught at the Naropa Institute, Bard College, Mills College, and UC San Diego. She was the editor and founder of O Books.